AustArch: A Database of 14C and Non-14C Ages from Archaeological Sites in Australia - Composition, Compilation and Review (Data Paper)

It has been 20 years since Smith and Sharp (1993) undertook the first comprehensive review of archaeological ages across Australia and used them as a proxy for exploring human activity in the Pleistocene. It was a pioneering paper, building on the preliminary application of these techniques in Australia by Bird and Frankel (1991), and with several similar studies to follow (e.g. Holdaway and Porch 1996; Lourandos and David 1998; Ulm and Hall 1996). The last few years has witnessed increasing use of radiocarbon data as a mainstream proxy with which to explore archaeological trends, facilitated by the increasing publication of large datasets and the availability of calibration and statistical software such as Oxcal, Calpal and R (e.g. Buchanan et al. 2008, 2011; Collard et al. 2010a, 2010b; Peros et al. 2010). In Australia, these advances have not gone unnoticed and, as part of recent research, we have now compiled an archaeological age dataset for Australia. Here, we present the complete Australian dataset and undertake a brief review of its composition, strengths and weaknesses.